ge, too literally
resurgent. Then came a check, with the perception that we were not
really face to face, inasmuch as she had over her eyes a horrible
green shade which, for her, served almost as a mask. I believed for the
instant that she had put it on expressly, so that from underneath it she
might scrutinize me without being scrutinized herself. At the same
time it increased the presumption that there was a ghastly death's-head
lurking behind it. The divine Juliana as a grinning skull--the vision
hung there until it passed. Then it came to me that she WAS tremendously
old--so old that death might take her at any moment, before I had time
to get what I wanted from her. The next thought was a correction to
that; it lighted up the situation. She would die next week, she would
die tomorrow--then I could seize her papers. Meanwhile she sat there
neither moving nor speaking. She was very small and shrunken, bent
forward, with her hands in her lap. She was dressed in black, and her
head was wrapped in a piece of old black lace which showed no hair.

My emotion keeping me silent she spoke first, and the remark she made
was exactly the most unexpected.

III

"Our house is very far from the center, but the little canal is very
comme il faut."

"It's the sweetest corner of Venice and I can imagine nothing more
charming," I hastened to reply. The old lady's voice was very thin and
weak, but it had an agreeable, cultivated murmur, and there was wonder
in the thought that that individual note had been in Jeffrey Aspern's
ear.

"Please to sit down there. I hear very well," she said quietly, as if
perhaps I had been shouting at her; and the chair she pointed to was
at a certain distance. I took possession of it, telling her that I
was perfectly aware that I had intruded, that I had not been properly
introduced and could only throw myself upon her indulgence. Perhaps the
other lady, the one I had had the honor of seeing the day before, would
have explained to her about the garden. That was literally what had
given me courage to take a step so unconventional. I had fallen in love
at sight with the whole place (she herself probably was so used to
it that she did not know the impression it was capable of making on a
stranger), and I had felt it was really a case to risk something. Was
her own kindness in receiving me a sign that I was not wholly out in
my calculation? It would render me extremely happy to think so. I could